Category Archives: Education

Greek tragedy prompts ‘blackface’ racism row at Sorbonne

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Protesters picket French university, which says actors were wearing masks according to ancient theatre practices

A row over alleged racism and attacks on freedom of expression has erupted in France after students prevented a Greek tragedy featuring actors using black masks from being performed at the Sorbonne, claiming it was “Afrophobic, colonialist and racist”.

Demonstrators who picketed the prestigious Paris university to stop actors entering the theatre said the play, The Suppliants by Aeschylus, was being performed with blackface and was offensive.

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What happens after rich kids bribe their way into college? I teach them | Anonymous

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A professor at an elite US school says an influx of unskilled and entitled students is monopolizing faculty time: ‘They will eat you alive’

  • If you have an experience or story tip on this topic to share with the Guardian, contact college.admissions.tips@theguardian.com

If you think corruption in elite US college admissions is bad, what happens once those students are in the classroom is even worse.

I know, because I teach at an elite American university – one of the oldest and best-known, which rejects about 90% of applicants each year for the small number of places it can offer to undergraduates.

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‘Mindblowing’ haul of fossils over 500m years old unearthed in China

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Thousands of fossils date back to huge burst in diversity of life on Earth known as Cambrian explosion

A “mindblowing” haul of fossils that captures the riot of evolution that kickstarted the diversity of life on Earth more than half a billion years ago has been discovered by researchers in China.

Paleontologists found thousands of fossils in rocks on the bank of the Danshui river in Hubei province in southern China, where primitive forms of jellyfish, sponges, algae, anemones, worms and arthropods with thin whip-like feelers were entombed in an ancient underwater mudslide.

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Cambridge University rescinds Jordan Peterson invitation

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Offer of visiting fellowship to controversial professor resulted in backlash from faculty and students

Cambridge University has rescinded its offer of a visiting fellowship to Jordan Peterson, the self-styled “professor against political correctness”, after a backlash from faculty and students.

Peterson, a psychology professor from Toronto who has courted controversy for his views on transgender rights, gender and race, announced on Monday via his YouTube channel that he was joining Cambridge for two months.

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Erasmus scheme in chaos as UK students left in limbo

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The 17,000 students about to do a year abroad face huge uncertainty over funding and accommodation

For Alice Watkins, a Manchester University student, a year in Paris, then Madrid, as part of her degree was a dream. Now, with the turmoil of Brexit, she is preparing to arrive in France this summer with nowhere to live and no idea whether the money will still be there to support her.

“It’s horrible not knowing,” Watkins says. “We’ve been told to take at least £1,200 of our own cash to cover us for the first six weeks, and that we can’t realistically sort any accommodation before we arrive. Turning up abroad with nowhere to live is a big stress.”

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China’s primary school students to learn how to avoid stock market pitfalls

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Ministry of education will work with country’s securities regulator to ‘increase financial literacy’ among China’s youth

Chinese primary school textbooks may soon include definitions for terms like “price-to-earnings ratio” or “buy and hold” as the country embarks on a campaign to improve investor awareness.

China’s ministry of education and the country’s securities regulator said they would be working together to “increase financial literacy” among China’s youth, according to state news agency Xinhua. Officials said the campaign to improve understanding of the country’s securities and futures markets would begin with textbooks for primary and middle schools.

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US college admissions scandal: how did the scheme work and who was charged?

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Felicity Huffman and Lori Loughlin were among 50 charged in scheme to get children into universities via bribery and cheating

There are 50 people charged in the case, including actors Felicity Huffman, known for her role on the TV show Desperate Housewives and the feature film Transamerica, and Lori Loughlin, a cast member on the TV series Full House. Defendants in the case include parents and college athletics coaches.

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Felicity Huffman among dozens charged over admissions fraud at top US schools

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Scheme helped wealthy Americans buy their children’s way into elite universities including Yale, Georgetown and Stanford

US federal prosecutors have charged the Hollywood actors Felicity Huffman and Lori Loughlin, along with almost 50 other people, over a $25m scheme to help wealthy Americans buy their children’s way into elite universities including Yale, Georgetown, Stanford and the University of Southern California.

Huffman appeared in court in Los Angeles on Tuesday afternoon, where a magistrate judge said she could be released on a $250,000 bond. The judge ordered the Desperate Housewives star to restrict her travel to the continental United States. Huffman’s husband, the actor William H Macy, attended his wife’s initial court appearance. He has not been charged and authorities have not said why.

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Chinese school under fire for buying tracking bracelets for students

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Smart devices will be used to record students’ health data and when they raise their hand

A high school in southern China has come under fire for buying “smart bracelets” to track its students.

Guangdong Guangya High school has purchased 3,500 bracelets that would record students heart rate and physical activity, as well as the number of times a pupil raised his or her hand in class, according to local media reports. The bands have a location function and can be used to pay for items as well as track attendance.

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Superyachts and private schools: Britain’s dirty money problem

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Russian money – some legitimate, some the proceeds of fraud – was channeled through a Lithuanian bank into the UK, according to a major leak of banking documents. The Guardian’s Juliette Garside has been investigating for months and describes how Prince Charles and some of England’s most exclusive schools have benefited. Plus: Ben Beaumont-Thomas on the legacy of the Prodigy’s Keith Flint

The leak of more than 1m bank transactions has shown how an estimated $4.6bn (£3.5bn) was sent to Europe and the US from a Russian-operated network of 70 offshore companies with accounts in Lithuania.

The Guardian’s Juliette Garside has been investigating the network and where the money ended up. She tells India Rakusen that money linked to major Russian fraud cases was laundered with funds from legitimate enterprise, making it impossible to trace the original source. It could then be spent on luxury goods, private school fees and property.

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French teachers give top grades in protest at baccalaureate changes

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Protesters use tactic to fight Emmanuel Macron’s proposed changes to high school exam

Teachers in Paris and western France have begun giving every pupil in their classes top marks in tests and evaluations in protest at changes to France’s baccalaureate exams.

The baccalaureate, which pupils take in their last year of high school, is based on a structure created under Napoleon in 1808. A revamp of the education system by the president, Emmanuel Macron, has been presented as key to his pro-business project to modernise the Frenc economy.

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A brief history of concrete: from 10,000BC to 3D printed houses

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The Romans used concrete in everything from bath houses to the Colosseum. Our modern concrete structures will never last as long

“Unlike the Pantheon … virtually all the concrete structures one sees today will eventually need to be replaced,” writes Robert Courland is his weighty tome Concrete Planet, “costing us trillions of dollars in the process.”

While there is some debate over when and where the first concrete was used – the Göbekli Tepe temple in modern-day Turkey was built using T-shaped pillars of carved limestone approximately 12,000 years ago, desert traders used early concrete to make underground water cisterns 8,000 years ago, and the ancient Egyptians used gypsum and lime to make mortars – there is little dispute that the first people to use concrete in the way we do today were the Romans.

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School lessons to cover sexting, FGM and mental health

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Department for Education unveils fresh guidelines for sex and health lessons in England

The Department for Education (DfE) has unveiled fresh guidelines for sex and health education across England, with relationships, cyber safety and mental health all set to be included as part of the new curriculum.

Three new subjects have been created – relationships education from primary school, relationships and sex education at secondary school, and health education for all ages in which students will learn about the importance of getting enough sleep, the dangers of sexting and how to spot anxiety in their friends.

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Children to be taught dangers of female genital mutilation

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Sex education shake-up in secondary schools means learning about grooming, forced marriage and domestic abuse

The dangers of female genital mutilation will be taught to all secondary school pupils in England from 2020 as part of a bold shake-up of relationships and sex education.

New proposals will be presented to parliament on Monday which would see the curriculum reformed to include relationship education for primary age pupils and health education for pupils of all ages in state-funded schools. Secondary school pupils will also be taught about grooming, forced marriage and domestic abuse.

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‘The beginning of great change’: Greta Thunberg hails school climate strikes

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The 16-year-old’s lone protest last summer has morphed into a powerful global movement challenging politicians to act

Greta Thunberg is hopeful the student climate strike on Friday can bring about positive change, as young people in more and more countries join the protest movement she started last summer as a lone campaigner outside the Swedish parliament.

Related: Teenage activist takes School Strikes 4 Climate Action to Davos

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Record numbers from China and Hong Kong applying to study in UK

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Chinese and Hongkonger university applicants now outnumber those from Wales

Record numbers of students from China and Hong Kong are applying for places at British universities, overtaking the number of applicants from Wales, according to official figures.

Data from the Universities and Colleges Admissions Service (Ucas) shows a spike in demand for undergraduate places from mainland China and a small rise in applications from the EU, despite fears over Brexit.

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Women ‘terrified’ as students allowed to return after rape messages

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Men allowed back on campus early after University of Warwick reduces suspension

Women discussed as rape targets by a group of male students at the University of Warwick say they are terrified of seeing the men return to campus after the university reduced the length of their suspension.

Last year five men were barred or suspended by the university over their membership of a long-running group chat that discussed rape and sexual assault of women, including individual students, as well as racism, antisemitism and homophobia.

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Demolition of Bristol eyesore makes way for university campus

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Temple Quarter’s rich past includes housing squatters, Royal Mail, a factory and cattle market

Demolition work is under way at Bristol’s most famous eyesore, bringing an end to a sprawling, derelict building that became a playground for squatters, illegal ravers and graffiti artists.

The former Royal Mail sorting office, which was once reportedly likened by the former prime minister David Cameron to the “entrance to a war zone”, is to be brought down to make way for a new university campus.

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Orkney rated Britain’s best place to live in terms of quality of life

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Scotland and north of England dominate top five as measured by housing, crime and schools

Orkney is the best place to live in the UK, with cheap houses, low crime, good schools and a population who are among the happiest and healthiest in the country, according to the annual Halifax quality of life survey.

The survey found that all the top five best places to live in the UK were in Scotland or the north of England. Richmondshire in the north of the Yorkshire Dales came second, while the appropriately named Eden district in Cumbria was third.

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Egypt frustrates Giulio Regeni investigation three years on

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Italian doctoral student’s family seek truth about his torture and murder in early 2016

Three years after the disappearance, torture and murder of Italian doctoral student Giulio Regeni in Cairo, Egypt is stonewalling Italy’s efforts to investigate.

In November, Italian prosecutors officially named five members of Egypt’s security services as subject to investigation in the case of Regeni, who went missing on 25 January 2016 aged 28. But two months on, Egypt has barely acknowledged the development.

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